e
matter of Niagara. I have made the description very brief (as it should
be), but I fancy it is good. I am beginning to think over the
introductory chapter, and it has meanwhile occurred to me that I should
like, at the beginning of the volumes, to put what follows on a blank
page. _I dedicate this Book to those friends of mine in America, who,
loving their country, can bear the truth, when it is written good
humouredly and in a kind spirit._ What do you think? Do you see any
objection?"

My reply is to be inferred from what he sent back on the 20th. "I don't
quite see my way towards an expression in the dedication of any feeling
in reference to the American reception. Of course I have always intended
to glance at it, gratefully, in the end of the book; and it will have
its place in the introductory chapter, if we decide for that. Would it
do to put in, after 'friends in America,' _who giving me a welcome I
must ever gratefully and proudly remember, left my judgment free, and_
who, loving, &c. If so, so be it."

Before the end of the month he wrote: "For the last two or three days I
have been rather slack in point of work; not being in the vein. To-day I
had not written twenty lines before I rushed out (the weather being
gorgeous) to bathe. And when I have done that, it is all up with me in
the way of authorship until to-morrow. The little dog is in the highest
spirits; and jumps, as Mr. Kenwigs would say, perpetivally. I have had
letters by the Britannia from Felton, Prescott, Mr. Q, and others, all
very earnest and kind. I think you will like what I have written on the
poor emigrants and their ways as I literally and truly saw them on the
boat from Quebec to Montreal."

This was a passage, which, besides being in itself as attractive as any
in his writings, gives such perfect expression to a feeling that
underlies them all, that I subjoin it in a note.[63] On board this
Canadian steamboat he encountered crowds of poor emigrants and their
children; and such was their patient kindness and cheerful endurance, in
circumstances where the easy-living rich could hardly fail to be
monsters of impatience and selfishness, that it suggested to him a
reflection than which it was not possible to have written anything more
worthy of observation, or more absolutely true. Jeremy Taylor has the
same philosophy in his lesson on opportunities, but here it was
beautified by the example with all its fine touches. It made us read
Rich